


Mayday

by seekergeek



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Deadliest Catch, Established Relationship, M/M, Minor Character Death (multiple)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekergeek/pseuds/seekergeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John turned the Atlantis into the wave that appeared out of the dark and yelled into the deck loudspeaker, "Hang on, there's a big one!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mayday

**Author's Note:**

> link to song 'Only Gay Eskimo' contained within fic

John turned the _Atlantis_ into the wave that appeared out of the dark and yelled into the deck loudspeaker, "Hang on, there's a big one!"

The monster wave crashed over the bow of the ship and knocked Lorne off of his feet. John watched anxiously for a few heart-stopping moments until Lorne slid to a stop by the crab posts still stacked on deck. John did a quick count of the rest of the crew to make sure he hadn't lost anybody and then said, "Lorne! You okay, buddy?' He hoped so. The boat was already down one man with Ford being in rehab.

Lorne scrambled back up onto his feet, turned to the wheelhouse, then raised both arms and waved them to signify that he was fine. John sighed in relief and watched Lorne go back to the launcher out of the corner of one eye as he continued to wrestle the _Atlantis_ through the rough weather. If the storm got any worse he was going to pull his crew off the deck to wait it out inside the safety of the ship. No amount of crabs was worth the loss of one of his people.

The ship's radio crackled into life and John's stomach churned as the words no fisherman wanted to hear came blaring out, "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the _Expedition_! We have taken on water and require rescue! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!"

Fuck, thought John, that was Elizabeth's boat. The only female captain in the fishing fleet, Elizabeth counted as one of the few people outside of his crew that John thought of as family. Her gutsiness in taking over the business after her husband Sumner's death was admired across the fleet even if most of the fishermen thought she shouldn't be on the Bering Sea. John triggered the deck loudspeaker. "Rodney! Stop loading pots! _Expedition's_ put out a Mayday!"

The broad shouldered man working the crane looked up at the wheelhouse and John caught a flash of worried blue eyes. Rodney waved an arm letting John know he'd heard and began shutting down the crane. John watched as the rest of the crew hurried around, securing equipment.

John listened to the radio as the Coast Guard broadcast the last known location of the _Expedition_ and directed all ships in range to assist in rescue operations. John set course for the area, worry eating at him. Behind him, he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs to the wheelhouse and Rodney soon arrived by his side, wringing his hands worriedly. "I knew I should have double-checked the bilge pump for her! That crazy Czech engineer of hers couldn't possibly have fixed it correctly!"

"I'm sure Radek's repair work was just fine," John replied mildly as he turned the _Atlantis_ into another big wave. The water smashed violently over the deck, trying its best to rip equipment off the boat and out to sea. His crew had done their job well though, and everything stayed firmly in place. The storm was definitely getting worse, he noted absently. "Besides, you know as well as I do that it could be any number of things that went wrong, especially right now," he finished grimly.

Rodney's eyes shot a quick glance at the steadily worsening weather outside and then looked away. "Ronon's gonna fix us some food since we've gotten a break from launching the pots," he said gruffly and then disappeared back below.

John grimaced, remembering another storm that he preferred not to. He then shook his head and forced his mind back to the job of piloting the ship. It was dangerous, damned dangerous, out here and a wandering mind could get them all killed.

After a while Lorne came up and shoved John toward the stairs as he took over the helm. "Go, eat, Shep. Get some sleep too, if you can. I'm pretty fresh still and we'll need you at the helm when we get to the rescue site. You're the least likely of all of us to run over a life raft in this slop."

John nodded wearily and headed down to the galley. He'd only been up for 22 hours, but a rescue in this weather demanded all the sharpness of mind a man could muster. As he walked into the galley Teyla gracefully rose from the table, seemingly unaffected by the heaving of the boat. John didn't know how she managed that, but her sure-footedness more than made up for her small size when it came to working on the deck. Nearly all the other captains had thought he'd lost his mind when he'd hired her to work on his boat, but John had never regretted his decision for a moment. She was the kind of deck hand a captain prayed for – tough, efficient and calm in an emergency. "Let me fix you a plate, John," she said. "You look tired."

Rodney snorted into his coffee as he sat at the other end of the table. "We're all tired, Teyla. We're fishing, remember? If you're not tired around here, you're not making any money."

Teyla rolled her eyes affectionately at him and finished dishing out food for John. Easily compensating for the rolling of the ship, she walked over and set down the plate in front of John. He picked up a fork and poked at it a bit. It looked like some weird Polynesian dish with Spam and pineapple. Seeing as how Ronon was a weird Polynesian, it wasn't as much of a surprise as it could have been. John took a bite and decided that it was pretty good – for Spam, anyways. "Not bad," he mumbled around his mouthful to Ronon across the table.

"Thanks," Ronon grunted, lifting his eyes briefly to John's before falling back onto his second helping of food with a ferocity that always surprised John. He sometimes wondered what Ronon's story was that he always ate like he'd been starved, but Ronon was a man of few words and John didn't think he'd ever hear the tale. He was invaluable on the boat though – tough, strong and brave. After John had seen Ronon single-handedly catch a 150 pound crab pot that was heading toward Rodney's head, he even forgave him for being the one person on his crew most likely to need bailing out of jail for fighting in bars every time the _Atlantis_ hit land. Nowadays, he just budgeted it into the cost of the operation of the boat.

After dinner and clean-up Rodney went down to check on the engines while Teyla and Ronon took the opportunity to hit the sack for a few hours of sleep. John went to his bunk and tried to follow suit, but his mind refused to give into the lure of sleep as it continued to worry about Elizabeth and her crew. As he flopped over onto his other side and tried to put it out of his mind yet again, he heard someone come into his room and looked up.

"Shh, it's just me," said Rodney quietly as he shucked his pants and then climbed in behind John and wrapped an arm around him, surrounding him in warmth. Rodney then leaned over him and kissed John high on the cheekbone where his admittedly wild beard hadn't yet managed to take over on his face. "It's like kissing a sea urchin," Rodney grumbled affectionately as he settled in behind John. "I'll be glad when we're done fishing and you once again deign to do battle with the shrubbery on your face. I miss your chin."

John managed a brief chuckle at the familiar insult and leaned back into the warm bulk of his husband. "I can't sleep," he confessed.

Rodney's grip tightened on him. "Elizabeth is a smart woman. She knows what to do in an emergency," Rodney said tightly, worry nevertheless dripping off of each word, "We'll find her, John," he added more confidently.

Despite his best efforts, John's mind slid back to another boat and time. The _Afghanistan_ had gone down in a storm like this and John shuddered as the sense memory, of wind and waves battering at a tiny life raft, rolled over him. Once again, John saw the wave throw Mitch and Dex out of the life raft, watched helplessly as Holland died of hypothermia right next to him mere minutes before the Coast Guard helicopter found them. His mind heard again the gut-wrenching words that the bodies of the three other crew members had been recovered, leaving John the only survivor.

A shushing noise in his ear brought him back to the present day. "Shh, shh, shh. You're here now, you're safe," he heard Rodney murmur and John allowed it to soothe him. He didn't know how Rodney had found out about the _Afghanistan_ – John had certainly never mentioned it – but the fact that he knew helped a lot in dealing with it.

"Let's get some sleep," John said, "We've got a crew to rescue soon."

Rodney snorted, "I'm not the one who was still awake," then pulled John close. His breath on the back of John's neck was soothing, and as it slowed and evened out John relaxed and fell asleep as well.

It was a dingy gray dawn that John awoke to as Lorne's voice boomed over the intercom. "We're at the coordinates that the _Expedition _was last known to be at, people. Everybody get topside and keep your eyes peeled."

Rodney blinked sleepily at John and gave him a gentle peck on the forehead. "Hedgehog," he murmured and then rolled out of bed. John watched as Rodney slipped on his pants from the previous day and jammed his feet into his rubber boots. "Somebody had better have made coffee," he growled threateningly, and headed for the galley.

John dressed and followed after him. Teyla had apparently made the coffee, since Rodney was making faces at the taste of it between taking large slurps of the stuff. John grabbed a cup and took a sip. _Well, it wasn't burnt at least,_ John thought as he grimaced at the taste. He took it up into the wheelhouse with him.

Lorne handed over the wheel without a word to him and John looked out over the area. The storm continued to churn the waters and waves rose and fell all around them. It wasn't going to be easy to find any survivors – not easy at all. John took a fortifying gulp of his awful coffee and began scanning the sea for signs as he carefully steered the ship.

Two long hours had past when the radio blared to life again. It was Jack O'Neill, captain of the _Stargate_, announcing that his ship had rescued deck chief Eugene Bates and deckhand Bill Stackhouse from a life raft. Both were in fairly good condition considering, but had reported that a greenhorn deckhand, Jesse Markham, had been swept out to sea while attempting to close up the raft shelter. They were getting med-evaced by the Coast Guard to be treated for exposure and hypothermia.

Another several tense hours went by and John and his crew had still sighted nothing when the Coast Guard announced that they'd found a body in one of the orange survival suits. "Damn it!" John cursed and slammed a hand into the wheelhouse wall.

"They find a body?" Ronon asked as he came up behind John and filled his empty cup with more coffee.

"Yeah, they did," John replied tightly, "Fuck."

Ronon laid a hand on John's shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze before letting go. "Know who it is yet?"

John shook his head and Ronon grunted in acknowledgment. A while later word spread through the fleet that it had been Peter Grodin's body that had been found. That was a blow. John had known the man well and had liked his dry humor. He found himself roughly scrubbing at his leaking eyes for a bit before turning his attention back to the waters around him.

They continued the search throughout the day and the storm slowly started to play itself out. It was almost dusk when John heard Ronon shout, "Off the starboard bow!"

John looked over and there, in the distant heaving waves, was an island of floating debris and rope surrounding two orange survival suits. His heart pounding with both dread and hope, John turned the boat toward the flotsam and threw the throttle open as far as it would go. The _Atlantis_ chugged quickly forwards as John navigated through the still treacherous waves.

As they drew close, his crew sprang into action on deck, grabbing hooklines and catchpoles while Rodney manned the crane. John killed the engine as they drew alongside and he strained his eyes to take a good look at those in the survival suits. It was too far away to tell who they were or what shape they were in, but John was encouraged by the fact that both of their faces were still above water, kept there by the nest of debris cradling them.

Teyla and Lorne both tossed hooklines over the rails and managed to catch some of the tangle of ropes. Once they had managed to haul the mess of debris surrounding their orange clad targets to the edge of the ship, Ronon used the catchpole to move the debris off to one side so that their view of the suits was unobstructed and then ran for the crane hook and leaped up onto it. After a brief shouting match between Rodney and Ronon, John saw Rodney grumpily give in and direct the crane so that Ronon dangled directly over the two survival suits. Rodney delicately lowered the hook until Ronon hung about five or six feet above the surface of the water, muttering fretfully the entire time by the looks of it from where John could see.

Ronon then made John's heart stop by looping the crane hook line several times around one leg and then letting go of the line so that he hung upside down, the waves threatening to wash over his face. He produced a big mucking knife out of seemingly nowhere, reached out and cut the ropes holding the orange clad fisherman in their nest of floating junk. He then grabbed the hoods of both suits and bellowed something over at Rodney. Rodney shouted imprecations back at him as he made the crane gently lift its precious burden up. As soon as the survival suits were free of the water, Lorne and Teyla made desperate reaches with the catchpoles to pull the limp bodies toward the deck as Rodney swung the crane over in concert with their actions. They caught hold of a leg of each person and Rodney shouted as warning as he rapidly lowered the crane hook, depositing Ronon and his two charges safely on deck.

John was immensely frustrated by the fact that he was trapped up in the wheelhouse and could not help on deck, but the storm hadn't quit quite yet and he had to remain at the helm in order to make sure that this boat didn't sink as well. "Are they breathing?" he shouted into the deck loudspeaker.

Teyla and Lorne each checked a person and both gave thumbs up before beckoning Rodney and Ronon, now disentangled from the crane hook's line, to help them get their prizes inside out of the weather. They disappeared from John's view and soon he heard noises below him.

"Oh my god! His is lips are blue!"

"Help me get them out of these things! Rodney, go get some blankets!"

John shouted down the stairs, "There are a bunch of chemical heat packs in the aft storage, top shelf! Activate a bunch of them and pack them in at the armpits and groin! See if you can find some hats and cover their heads too!"

"I'll get 'em, you finish getting off the suits!"

John left them all to do their jobs and focused on moving the boat away from the debris so that the ropes didn't foul his prop. Once he heard that the frantic scrambling had died down somewhat, he shouted down, "Who do we have? How are they doing?"

"It is Elizabeth and Radek," came Teyla's reply, "They are unconscious, but since we have started to warm them, they have started to shake again!"

"Good!" John replied, relieved. "Shaking's good!" Damn, that had been close. Once a person in hypothermia stopped shaking things went bad very quickly. It was an incredibly fortunate thing that he and his crew had found them when they did.

He grabbed the radio a shaking hand and held up the speaker to his mouth. "This is Captain Sheppard of the _Atlantis_. We have found two survivors, repeat, we have found two survivors. Captain Elizabeth Weir and Engineer Radek Zelenka have been found. We are treating them for severe hypothermia and request medevac. Repeat, we request med-evac for two cases of severe hypothermia."

Over the radio came a staticky, "This is the Coast Guard, _Atlantis_. Acknowledging retrieval of survivors and request for med-evac. Our ETA is 27 minutes to your coordinates, over."

"ETA 27 minutes, got it. Look forward to seeing you," John replied and then hung up the radio speaker.

Lorne came up from the galley. "I'll take over here for a bit if you want to see them, Shep."

John gave Lorne a small smile. His people knew him too well. Lorne had to be exhausted, but he still offered John this because he knew how badly John needed it right now. "Thanks buddy. I'll just be a sec."

He hurried downstairs and came on the scene of Teyla, Rodney and Ronon busily tucking the last of the heat-packs under the blankets that Elizabeth and Radek were bundled up in. They looked horrible, lips still blue with cold and shaking uncontrollably. It was the best sight in John's life. They were alive, and as long as they were still alive there was a good chance that they'd recover now that they were free of the icy waters of the Bering. "Hey," he said.

Rodney looked up at that and then pointed accusingly at Ronon, "Tell this moron that he could have gotten himself killed doing that stunt today! We could have wound up with _three_ cases of hypothermia to deal with if he'd not been incredibly, _insanely_ lucky!"

John looked over at Ronon, who rolled his eyes. John reached up and scratched his head saying, "He's got a point, Ronon. You scared the living crap out me when you did that. You really are lucky you didn't fall in with them."

Ronon gave John an unrepentant look. "I was fine. And I got 'em out. That's what counts."

John lowered his hand from his hair and then placed both hands on his hips. "Yeah, you did. And I'm appreciative of that, really. But thing is that you're needed here. If you don't take precautions for your own safety you run the risk of injuring yourself and leaving us short-handed, buddy. I won't stand for it. One of my jobs here is to make sure I get you back to land alive and whole if at all possible. I can't do that when you're pulling crazy shit like that. I'm docking your pay by a tenth. Don't do that again."

"Or at least give me enough heads up on what you're planning to do so I can rig up a safety harness, for pete's sake," Rodney added, aggrieved.

"Okay," Ronon said, looking down for a second and then back up to Rodney. "Heads up next time I need to do that. Got it."

John sighed, realizing that that was as close as an apology as he was likely to get from Ronon. Jesus, the guy made him feel old some days. He was starting to sound like his father when he had these little talks with Ronon. "Coast Guard is on its way to pick them up for med-evac. Probably be about 20 minutes or so. "

"We will be ready," Teyla replied as she continued to look after Elizabeth and Radek. John's heart leaped up as Elizabeth and Radek both began to stir.

"Wha.." Elizabeth moaned through the chattering of her teeth.

John knelt down beside her, "You're on the _Atlantis_, Elizabeth. We found you and Radek. The _Stargate_ found Bates and Stackhouse too. The _Apollo_, the _Daedalus_ and the _Cheyenne Mountain_ are all out looking with the Coast Guard for the rest." He deliberately left out that Grodin's body had already been recovered. She didn't need to know that now. "Coast Guard is coming to pick you and Radek up in a few. You just rest and get warm okay?"

"Okay," she replied faintly. Out of the corner of his eye John caught Rodney lean down toward Radek.

"When you're better you and I are going to have words about taking better care of your ship," Rodney muttered to him. "If I'm going to be out on this god-forsaken ocean I'd rather be fishing for crab, not fishing you out of the water."

Radek replied with a shaky phrase in Czech that John was pretty sure meant 'fuck you, too' and John grinned. If Radek was up to cussing Rodney out, then he was going to be just fine.

Reassured, John went back up to the wheelhouse. "They're awake," he told Lorne as he took over the wheel again. "Go to bed and catch some zzz's. We're not going to need you for a while."

"Sure thing, captain," Lorne replied as he grinned and gave John a sloppy salute.

John shook his head at that. "Get outta here!" he replied with mock severity, shoving Lorne away from him by pushing him on the shoulder. Lorne laughed at him and disappeared below deck.

Several minutes later John watched from the wheelhouse as the Coast Guard came and lifted out Elizabeth and Radek. Once they were done, he radioed his thanks to the helicopter pilot and then informed the rest of the fleet that the Coast Guard had picked up Radek and Elizabeth and that it looked like they were going to be okay. He took a moment to savor that fact and then went back to scanning the ocean for more survival suits. Markham was still out there somewhere and John owed it to the greenhorn's family to try to bring him back.

The luck of the searchers seemed to have run out though, and the search was eventually called off by the Coast Guard. Markham was buried, like Mitch and Dex before him, by the sea instead of his family.

The night that the search was called off, Rodney once again slipped into John's bed. "Hey," he said softly, pressing against John's back and wrapping an arm around him. "At least we found Elizabeth and Radek. And we've heard that they're okay."

"Yeah," John grated out with a rough voice. "But Markham..."

"Knew the job was dangerous when he took it," Rodney interrupted, plowing over what John might have said. "Elizabeth lets all the greenhorns know what they're getting into before they set foot on deck. Makes them fill out wills and everything. He knew."

John sighed. It was an old argument between them, one they had every time a man died out on the Bering Sea. "I know. It doesn't make it feel any better though."

"I know," Rodney replied, pulling John closer. "But it's the only thing I can think to tell you. I'm not good at this, this comforting thing. A guy died. Every day we're out here, a guy might die. I think I must be insane to work on a boat instead of doing, I dunno, astrophysics or something. It would be safer."

"Astrophysics, huh?" John said, trying to picture it – Rodney in a tweed jacket in front of a chalkboard with a bunch of numbers and symbols scribbled on it. Nope, couldn't do it. For all that Rodney bitched and moaned about it, he really was at his best in dangerous and difficult situations.

Rodney tilted his chin up. "Yes, astrophysics. I could have gone to college, you know. My IQ is 197 and if I didn't have to get a job to take care of Jeannie after my parents died on us oh so inconveniently, I would have."

John turned around in Rodney's arms and wrapped his own around him. "I'm glad you didn't," he replied softly, "Because then I wouldn't have a genius for a ship's engineer." He leaned in and kissed Rodney softly on the tip of his nose.

"Porcupine," Rodney complained half-heartedly with a gentle smile on his lips.

"I'll shave as soon as we fill up the second hold. We've had a good year, it should only be another couple days before it's topped off," John promised.

"You and your superstitions," Rodney replied, rolling his eyes. "Between the beard and the damned songs you make us all sing when we head out and come back, it's no wonder that the rest of the fleet thinks we're insane."

John felt a little indignant at that particular dig. "Hey! O'Neill is far more crazy than I could ever hope to be."

Rodney snuggled a bit closer. "True. But at least both of you were smart enough to point those moronic camera crews down the dock to Landry, Ellis and Caldwell when they came a knocking. I hear one of those camera guys was dumb enough to not watch his step on deck and broke his ankle when he fell into the hold early in the season. Had to be med-evaced out."

"Yeah, Ellis was pissed about that," John agreed. "Killed a couple of crabs when he broke it, too." Then a horrible thought occurred to him. "Oh, fuck."

Rodney released him and sat up to regard him in alarm. "What? What's wrong?"

"They're going to want to interview us about the rescue when we get back," John moaned, closing his eyes. Cameras in his face while some guy asked questions that would bring up old demons John preferred to leave buried. Great.

Rodney collected him back into his arms and cuddled back in. "Ugh. You're right. It doesn't help that they've been chomping at the bit to talk to us since they found out about our rep from Ellis, the bastard. Makes me happy that that camera man killed some of his crabs."

John sighed, "Yeah, 'gayest crab boat in the fishing fleet' was not something that I wanted publicized like that."

Rod snorted, "Hmph. If you were that worried about it, you wouldn't have us sing '[Only Gay Eskimo](http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/tenacious_d/im_the_only_gay_eskimo.html)' over bullhorns to rub everybody's nose in it every time we come back to the harbor."

John stuck out his lower lip. "That's different. That's...thumbing our nose at convention."

"Whatever," Rodney replied, yawning. "Let's go to sleep, John. The sooner we get some shut eye, the sooner we can fill up the boat, get your face mowed, head back home, and sing that stupid, stupid song one more time."

John smiled softly at him. "Slave driver."

Rodney gave another jaw-cracking yawn. "Tired of that cactus sitting on your face."

John hugged Rodney a little tighter and closed his eyes. "Yeah, me too." He drifted off, looking forward to finishing up the fishing and getting kisses from Rodney once his good-luck beard came off.


End file.
